IN DARKEST RUSSIA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 November 1924, Page 7

IN DARKEST RUSSIA.

WITH WRANGEL’S ARMY

I A DOCTORS STORY. ’ OUTRAGES AND MURDERS. Stories of terrorised, famine-stricken Russia,, during that post-armistice period when the Bolshevik regime held the country in its grip, .and of ravaged Ireland, when the Sinn Fein activities made that country a countrepart of Russia, have drifted from time to time to New Zealand. A graphic story of the condition of things in both countries was given to the Auckland Star by Dr. H. H. Crickitt, surgeon of the ship Cumberland. Dr. Crickitt was in Russia with the British Military Mission from April, 1919, to 1929, and later went to Ireland. He was,in both countries when the ‘ ‘reign of terror” was at its height. v, 'After the armistice, Salonika haying been evacuated, Dr. Crickitt became medical officer to the 47th division, R.A.F., which was part of the- British Military Mission. In June, 1919, the division joined the army under the Russian General Wrangel, which , was fighting its way towards Tsaritzin., The R.A.F. did little bombing and “straffing,” and the Bolsheviks were pushed back to Tsaritzin, which is on the Volga and about 485 miles from the Army base a.t Novorossisk. Tsaritzin was taken on June 29, 1919, and the Bolsheviks pushed About another 150 miles up the Volga.! Wrangel, however, overestimated his troops and his supplies, and was forced back, again to within five miles of the.‘recently-taken town. The Reds even got within the outskirts of the town, but'Wrangel’s army ’managed to hold them back for some time. The- position remained practically unchanged until just after Christmas. Then the Reds broke through the line of Denikin, the Russ* ian General-in-Qhief, this being made possible hv two of his regiments going over, en bloc, to the Bolsheviks, and thus leaving a -gap in the line, through which Boudini, commander of the Reds, who had previously been a. major in the Russian army, entered. His army pushed its way through, outflanking Denikin’s troops. A general retreat followed, the 47th Squadron, with Dr. Crickitt, leaving in trains. Great blockages wer© caused on the lines by troops and refugees, jit. was three weeks before Ekilerinovar, 400 miles down the line, was reached. “On the way we saw stations crowded with refugees trying to escape from the Bolshies,” said the doctor. “We took as many as possible on onr trains. •During the passage down we also saw, swinging from trees, many spies who had been caught in Wrangel’jr army. APPALLING CONDITIONS.

“Typhus fever was sweeping the country,” continued the doctor. “Hundreds of Russians, both civilians and troops, were dying. We even saw them dead and dying at the stations. At Ekilerinavor I saw sixteen dead taken from a troop train one day, and fourteen the next. The conditions generally were appalling. The people were penniless. Tsaritzin was a grain-growing centre, but there was no grain to sow. Starvation was on every side. Besides the typhus fever there was cholera. The atrocities of the Bolsheviks were horrible. They went in for ‘glovemaking,’ that is, they would cut the skin of a victim’s arm up near the elbow, and cut it right down to the fingers. Then they would kill, and fling the dead into pits. In' one instance, of which I was told by. a Miss Fieff, a number of Russians were made to walk in single file down a flight of .steps in a small room. As they came down the Reds shot them , until the place ran with blood. In another instance a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl was outraged, and then hanged to a tree and shot. There were innumerable similar atrocities.”